The Bitcoin.com Store went through a major facelift last week that saw the inclusion of additional products, such as new merchandise, art, hardware devices and paraphernalia. Since then, it has continued to add new products in an effort to expand its large line of offerings, and has now gone one step further. The store has partnered with Egifter, a gift card service, and customers can now purchase gift cards for any of more than 300 retailers.

The Egifter Marketplace has been integrated, in a way, into the Bitcoin.com Store. The store will provide an interface to the marketplace to browse and purchase any of the available cards. Among the retail options are Best Buy, AutoZone, Dunkin Donuts, Banana Republic, Applebees, the California Pizza Kitchen and many more.

After making the card selections, users proceed to the checkout page on the store’s site and can make payments with Bitcoin BCH. The store uses Bitpay to process payments and, as such, payments must be made through a crypto wallet that is compatible with the Bitpay Payment Protocol. Once the purchase is complete, the customers will receive a virtual gift card corresponding to their store, or stores, of choice.

According to Bitcoin.com’s eCommerce Manager, Blake Moore, Bitcoin BCH enthusiasts now have hundreds of more reasons to appreciate the digital currency. He said, “Well over 300 cards from the world’s top brands are now available to our valued users which adds a great deal of accessibility.”

Bitcoin.com isn’t just the name behind a store. It offers a range of products, including a mining operation, a news service and a wallet. The wallet has been downloaded more than a million times from the Google Play Store and reportedly has more than 3 million users worldwide. The company is owned by Roger Ver, who recently announced that the company could be considering the launch of a cryptocurrency exchange.

The continued dedication of Bitcoin BCH enthusiasts is showing why the cryptocurrency is the world’s number one digital currency alternative to fiat. It is the only crypto that still adheres to the original design of digital currency as set forth by Satoshi Nakamoto. It continues to receive global merchant adoption and is now used by millions of retailers around the world.

Note: Tokens on the Bitcoin Core (segwit) Chain are Referred to as BTC coins. Bitcoin Cash (BCH) is today the only Bitcoin implementation that follows Satoshi Nakamoto’s original whitepaper for Peer to Peer Electronic Cash. Bitcoin BCH is the only major public blockchain that maintains the original vision for Bitcoin as fast, frictionless, electronic cash.

The story so far: I’ve downloaded a cryptocurrency wallet onto my phone, from Bitcoin.com, as I explained here. Now I want to turn some real money into crypto.

A friend has recommended Coinbase as an app that I could use to exchange real money (sorry, fiat money, as it’s called in the crypto world) into Bitcoin Cash (BCH)—which is the cryptocurrency that CoinGeek recommends.

I download Coinbase. It looks like this, and at the bottom of the screen, invites me to Sign Up.

Coinbase is a crypto exchange. So what’s the difference between an exchange and a wallet? Well, an exchange is like a bank, where you can buy and sell different currencies, whether crypto or fiat. You can keep money in an exchange, but a wallet is the easiest place from which to use crypto, whether for buying, transferring to someone else, or receiving someone else’s payment to you.

It’s like the difference between a bank and your physical wallet: you can keep money in both but for day to day spending, you use your wallet, not the bank.

Signing up to Coinbase is quite a faff. So much so that I transfer from my phone to the Coinbase website and do it on my laptop. As well as the usual passwords and personal details, you have to upload a couple of documents—passport, utility bill or credit card—and then they take a while to process them.

But a few minutes later Coinbase tells me we are in business:

To convert some money to BCH, just as with any other kind of currency exchange, I have to transfer of funds to Coinbase. Here are the choices of where my money can be sent from:

Although Coinbase recommends that I link up my bank account, I’m still taking baby steps, and so I choose to pay with a credit card. Not all cards will allow you to transfer into a crypto exchange, but I have one that does and so I enter its details, just like for any online purchase. Now I’m ready to buy some BCH. I start by entering $10:

But then I spot that the Coinbase fee is about 10 per cent, so I go crazy and double my investment to $20, where the fee comes down to a still substantial 7.5 per cent. Here’s the deal:

Somehow my dollar investment has been turned into pounds, but never mind: I press Buy now.

But there’s a problem: the price of BCH is so volatile that the exchange rate has changed even while I’m taking the above screenshot—and the deal is off:

I try again, more quickly this time. The deal is marginally better for me than the one Coinbase rejected. I take a look at the changing price of BCH. It’s fallen against the dollar in the past few minutes, which is why I’ve been able to get a very slightly better rate:

So now Coinbase is telling me that I’m the proud owner of some BCH. It cost me $26.30 and a couple of hours later, it’s worth $23.90 (but that includes the $1.50 fee to Coinbase). I can track its changing value on the site:

But, hey, I’m not here to speculate on currency price movements. I’m here to get money into my wallet. I need a strong cup of tea, so that’s for next time.

Note: Tokens on the Bitcoin Core (segwit) Chain are Referred to as BTC coins. Bitcoin Cash (BCH) is today the only Bitcoin implementation that follows Satoshi Nakamoto’s original whitepaper for Peer to Peer Electronic Cash. Bitcoin BCH is the only major public blockchain that maintains the original vision for Bitcoin as fast, frictionless, electronic cash.

Early Bitcoin Cash (BCH) user and investor Roger Ver has declared his plan to set up his own cryptocurrency exchange, according to Bloomberg.

The exchange will be available through Bitcoin.com, of which Ver is CEO, “so we’ll have thousands or tens of thousands of new users every single day,” he said. The website already offers his wallet app.

At this stage, Ver is still deciding whether to get a partner to create the exchange with, or to “build one internally.” The advantage of developing the platform on his own, according to him, was “we can do it really, really cheap, and we get exactly what we want.” He admitted, however, that “we don’t have the security of a battle-tested exchange that’s been around for a while.”

Hacks of cryptocurrency exchanges around the world continue to be a problem, resulting sometimes in millions of dollars worth of cryptocurrency being stolen. Just last month, Japanese cryptocurrency exchange Zaif was hacked, resulting in about $60 million stolen. At present, the exchange is not accepting new accounts.

In South Korea last June, two high-profile hacks of exchanges occurred, with about $40 million being lost from Coinrail, and about $30 million from Bithumb.

Ver said that Bitcoin BCH will be the base currency for the Bitcoin.com exchange. Already, some exchanges already use BCH as a base currency. Coinex launched late last year, and Voltaire.cash launched in September, offering BCH users more direct trades.

Ver, along with Bitcoin.com, has been one of the biggest proponents of BCH, citing its much lower transactions fees and faster transaction times compared to BTC. Bitcoin.com co-founder Emil Oldenburg made news last December when he said that he had sold all his “good as useless” BTC, trading them for BCH.

Note: Tokens on the Bitcoin Core (segwit) Chain are Referred to as BTC coins. Bitcoin Cash (BCH) is today the only Bitcoin implementation that follows Satoshi Nakamoto’s original whitepaper for Peer to Peer Electronic Cash. Bitcoin BCH is the only major public blockchain that maintains the original vision for Bitcoin as fast, frictionless, electronic cash.